An unworthy Deacon, named for the brother of God: James, striving to "work out his salvation with fear and trembling" within the Tradition (paradosis) of the Eastern Orthodox Faith. It is a strange and marvelous journey, and I am accompanied by the fourfold fruit of my fecundity. My wife, the Matushka or Diaconissa Sophia, is my beloved partner in the pursuit of Theosis, and she ranks me in every way.

Thursday, June 12, 2008

BooksWindows to Heaven: Introducing Icons to Protestants and CatholicsI stumbled upon this book in the local library. Being an "Introduction to Protestants..." I was not expecting much (shallow and geared to appeal to the Protestant nervousness about images), but I was surprised. This is a great little book and I highly recommend it...I find it is really doing a great job (thus far) of explaining icons, iconography, and the details of particular works. As I never claimed to be an expert on Iconography...I suppose I shouldn't be surprised by the details I am learning here.

And, my library also came through for me on another level. Last week I requested they order a copy of Pospielovsky's A History of Marxist-Leninist Atheism and Soviet Antireligious Policies (History of Soviet and Atheism in Theory and Practice, and the Believer) and surprisingly enough it showed up yesterday. I cannot wait to dig into this. Besides being of interest to me because I truly believe where the soviets failed in their deliberate attempts, we in western culture are better succeeding with softer and less deliberate efforts to secularize the world (and that parallels exist even if secularization is different than establishing a church of Atheism - I'll flush this out later perhaps), but also because we have untold numbers of martyrs and passion bearers from this time period and I should think we would wish to know more (something) about their experiences.